Monday, 14 August 2017
Our four-year Academy of Finland Project “Supra- and Transnational Foreign Policy versus National Parliamentary Government, 1914-2014”, is approaching its end and is producing several related publications. In June 2017, we organized an international workshop in Jyväskylä on “Parliaments, the Executive and Foreign Policy in Comparative and Transnational Perspectives”
(programme: https://www.jyu.fi/en/congress/history/foreignpolicy2017/programme).
Professor Pasi Ihalainen has completed his Springs of Democracy: National and Transnational Debates on Constitutional Reform in the British, German, Swedish and Finnish Parliaments, 1917-1919, which will be available open access from the Finnish Literature Society at https://oa.finlit.fi/ by October. This 600-page volume compares British, German, Swedish and Finnish debates on revolution, rule by the people, democracy and parliamentarism and their transnational links in the late 1910s. We next intend to focus on crises of legitimacy in representative governments as discursive processes, applying a comparative and transnational perspective, are planning an international research project surrounding this theme and welcome partners to participate in our plans. KGParl and The History of Parliament Trust have already agreed to join the advisory board of the project. In 2018, we expect at least one more doctoral dissertation in parliamentary history to be defended, and two more are in preparation.